Champaran forgets the apostle of ahimsa

True, the white-skinned indigo planters who systematically bled the local peasantry through innovative taxes have gone home. Their crumbling mansions, now decaying under the incessant monsoon rain, are the only remains of their extortionist ways.

Now a new breed of blood-suckers have replaced them. An efficient coalition of politicians, landlords, the police and the mafia. Frighteningly, sometimes these are interchangeable categories.

Indeed, both East and West Champaran have sent many to the Bihar Assembly, cutting across party lines, who came to power on one-line manifestos: “Vote for us, if you want to sleep at night.”

Take Sattan Yadav, a sitting MLA from here, who is presently serving life imprisonment for a 1980 case of murder and kidnapping. His elder brother, Bhagar Yadav, is an acknowledged dacoit of the region.

Occasionally the lid flies open to reveal the unholy nexus. A few weeks ago, a sum of Rs 18 lakh was stolen from a bank in Motihari, the district headquarters of East Champaran. And it is believed that 20 per cent of the loot was earmarked for someone close to the Chief Minister.

Fifty years of freedom has passed this region by. The local landlords of yesteryear and rich Marwari settlers own mile upon mile of prime paddy and sugar cane fields, despite the land reforms on paper. The only difference is that it is now held in the names of family members, friends, retainers and even, on occasion, household pets.

Kidnapping, it is said, was first resorted to as a means to recover unpaid debts. Soon, however, it was found to be profitable in itself.

Today, ransom demands for kidnapping cases vary according to the victim’s “capacity to pay” and could range from Rs 5,000 for a mamooli strike to Rs 3 crore for a really big catch. Sometimes both the kidnapped and the kidnapper have a common interest in remaining discreet about the incident.

Like Seeta Rajghadiya had. This Bettiah bigwig, notorious for his alleged role in an uranium smuggling case, was kidnapped a few months ago and subsequently released on a ransom amount of Rs 80 lakh, according to local sources. Once back home, he underplayed the incident.

This is probably why it is impossible to put a number on this crime. Brajesh Mehrotra, the DM of Bettiah, the district headquarters of West Champaran, points out that their incidence has come down and estimates last year’s figure as 40 to 50.

But the Muzaffarpur-based Gandhi Peace Foundation investigations reveal that while the number of cases have declined since their heyday in the early ’90s, some 63 incidents had occurred in 1996 in the Bagaha block alone.

The figure indicates how deeply kidnapping has percolated society here. Even intra-family disputes are sometimes at rifle-point and the threat of kidnapping. It is fear that greases the wheels of this crime. Muzaffarpur-based Arvind Varun, a junior engineer and Gandhian activist, who has interacted widely with villagers in the affected regions of West Champaran, points out that so great is this fear that in 90 per cent of the cases, FIRs are not filed when abductions take place. “There is a complete lack of faith in the police in any case,” he observes.

It is therefore not surprising that despite the high incidence of the crime, its perpetrators rarely see the inside of a jail.

Pandey Ramavilas Sharma, who has been practising in the Motihari Civil and Criminal Courts for the last 40 years, knows of not even one conviction, apart from Sattan Yadav’s. Says Pandey, “They are either hushed up or forgotten. Honest presiding officers are in any case quite the exception.”

How deep the rot is can be gauged from a senior police officer’s confession that the majority of policemen in the district are hand-in-glove with the criminals.

Apprehending criminals in any case is dangerous business for the police – not in terms of personal as much as professional security. There is the inevitable phone call from Patna asking for the criminal to be released forthwith. This is often followed by transfer or suspension orders.

If fear keeps the system going, frustration feeds it. Champaran’s youth have reached a cul de sac. With 87 per cent of people engaged in agriculture and no industry worth the name apart from a few sugar mills, unemployment is endemic to the region. Crime seems a way out of the impasse.

“At least 10 per cent of students at the matric level are already introduced to criminal activity,” reveals Arun Kumar Arun, a lecturer in Motihari’s G I College. A fact confirmed by the Motihari ASP, Deepak Verma: “Most of these crimes are performed by people aged from 18 to 30.”

It didn’t have to be like this. The land in both East and West Champaran is as fertile as Punjab’s. There’s even a local saying, Ajab desh majhuva, jahan bhaat na pooche kauva (a land so plentiful in rice that even the crows have disdain for it).

But Champaran’s tragedy is that behind this potential plenty are empty stomachs, and broken school buildings, as criminals make off with the loot. The Mahatma certainly doesn’t live here anymore. (To be concluded)